WEBVTT 00:00:19.993 --> 00:00:22.410 We start with a simple question: NOTE Paragraph 00:00:22.410 --> 00:00:26.587 "Does my pet really love me, or does she just want a treat?" 00:00:26.587 --> 00:00:27.957 (Laughter) 00:00:28.357 --> 00:00:31.562 Obviously, she really loves us. 00:00:31.562 --> 00:00:33.412 Obviously, right? 00:00:33.412 --> 00:00:34.753 (Laughter) 00:00:34.753 --> 00:00:39.981 How do we know what's really going on in those furry little heads? 00:00:39.985 --> 00:00:41.801 Something is going on. 00:00:41.801 --> 00:00:45.541 Why is the question always "Do they love me?" 00:00:45.541 --> 00:00:49.718 Why is it always about us? Why are we such narcissists? 00:00:49.718 --> 00:00:50.718 (Laughter) 00:00:50.718 --> 00:00:53.134 I have a different question. 00:00:55.828 --> 00:00:57.502 Who are you? 00:00:58.111 --> 00:01:01.421 That's a better question for animals, I think. 00:01:01.422 --> 00:01:05.491 We have things going on in our minds that we tend to assume 00:01:05.501 --> 00:01:08.850 are the exclusive abilities of humans. 00:01:09.654 --> 00:01:13.108 But there are other brains out there. 00:01:13.108 --> 00:01:14.903 Some of them are very big. 00:01:14.903 --> 00:01:17.263 What are they doing with those big brains? 00:01:17.829 --> 00:01:20.892 Can they think? Can they feel? 00:01:20.892 --> 00:01:25.818 How can we possibly find a way into that question? 00:01:25.818 --> 00:01:27.743 Well, there are ways in. 00:01:27.743 --> 00:01:30.593 We can look at the brain, we can look at evolution, 00:01:30.593 --> 00:01:32.686 and we can look at behaviors. 00:01:34.104 --> 00:01:38.440 First thing we have to realize is that our mind is inherited. 00:01:38.894 --> 00:01:41.552 Our brain comes from somewhere else. 00:01:41.573 --> 00:01:44.176 Jellyfish had the first nerves. 00:01:44.593 --> 00:01:48.134 The first nerves gave us the first spinal cords. 00:01:48.134 --> 00:01:50.984 The first spinal cords became the first vertebrates. 00:01:50.984 --> 00:01:55.106 Vertebrates came out of the ocean and started creating all kinds of trouble. 00:01:56.016 --> 00:02:01.483 It's still true that nerves of a fish, or a dog, or a person, 00:02:01.483 --> 00:02:04.103 all are basically the same. 00:02:04.103 --> 00:02:05.876 It's their organization that matters. 00:02:05.876 --> 00:02:09.507 But if the nerves are the same, what does it have to say 00:02:09.507 --> 00:02:12.910 about the possibility of mental experiences? 00:02:12.910 --> 00:02:15.624 Something like a crayfish, for instance. 00:02:15.624 --> 00:02:20.677 It turns out that you can give a crayfish anxiety disorder 00:02:20.677 --> 00:02:22.627 by giving it little electric shocks 00:02:22.627 --> 00:02:25.218 every time it tries to come out of its burrow. 00:02:25.218 --> 00:02:32.074 But if you give it the same drug that is used to treat anxiety disorder in humans, 00:02:32.074 --> 00:02:37.307 the crayfish relaxes, mellows out, and comes out, and starts exploring. 00:02:37.308 --> 00:02:40.221 The same thing with dogs with obsessive compulsive disorder: 00:02:40.221 --> 00:02:43.188 you give them the same drugs used to treat OCD in humans, 00:02:43.188 --> 00:02:44.861 it works for them too. 00:02:44.861 --> 00:02:49.608 What does it have to say about the parallel functionings of our brains? 00:02:49.608 --> 00:02:52.809 Do we celebrate the anxiety of crayfish? 00:02:52.809 --> 00:02:54.679 No, mostly we just boil them. 00:02:54.679 --> 00:02:56.448 (Laughter) 00:02:56.448 --> 00:03:01.026 Octopuses use tools, as well as do most apes. 00:03:01.397 --> 00:03:04.377 They recognize human faces. 00:03:04.377 --> 00:03:08.079 Do we celebrate the ape-like minds of octopi? 00:03:08.079 --> 00:03:10.383 Mostly we boil them. 00:03:11.718 --> 00:03:16.627 When grouper fish chase a prey fish into a crevice in the coral, 00:03:16.639 --> 00:03:20.502 they will go to where they know a moray eel is sleeping, 00:03:20.502 --> 00:03:23.749 and they will signal to the moray, "Follow me!" 00:03:23.753 --> 00:03:27.158 The moray goes. The moray will slither into the crevice. 00:03:27.158 --> 00:03:29.367 Sometimes the moray will get the fish. 00:03:29.367 --> 00:03:33.165 Sometimes the fish bolts, and the grouper gets it. 00:03:33.182 --> 00:03:34.645 It's a partnership. 00:03:34.645 --> 00:03:39.200 How do we celebrate the partnership between groupers and moray eels? 00:03:39.200 --> 00:03:41.427 Mostly fried. 00:03:41.427 --> 00:03:43.150 (Laughter) 00:03:45.650 --> 00:03:50.266 Sea otters use stone tools, and sea otters take time away 00:03:50.266 --> 00:03:55.757 from their own doings to teach baby sea otters what to do. 00:03:55.757 --> 00:04:01.122 Chimpanzees use tools, but chimpanzees don't take time to teach. 00:04:01.942 --> 00:04:06.250 Killer whales teach, and they share food. 00:04:06.889 --> 00:04:09.127 When we look at human brains, 00:04:09.127 --> 00:04:14.050 we see that the human brain is an elaboration on earlier brains, 00:04:14.050 --> 00:04:18.390 an elaboration that comes through the long sweep of evolution. 00:04:18.748 --> 00:04:21.755 If you look at the human brain and a chimpanzee brain, 00:04:21.755 --> 00:04:27.082 you see that the human brain is basically a very big chimpanzee brain. 00:04:27.082 --> 00:04:31.175 It's big at least, so we can retain a certain insecure sense 00:04:31.175 --> 00:04:32.954 of our own superiority, 00:04:32.954 --> 00:04:35.464 which is the main thing that matters to us. 00:04:35.464 --> 00:04:40.800 But, uh-oh, there is a dolphin brain - bigger, more convolutions. 00:04:40.800 --> 00:04:43.414 What is it doing with that brain? 00:04:44.475 --> 00:04:48.470 We can see brains, but cannot see minds. 00:04:48.887 --> 00:04:54.654 Yet, we can see the workings of minds in the logic of behaviors. 00:04:57.736 --> 00:05:00.247 These elephants in this family of elephants 00:05:00.247 --> 00:05:04.177 have found a shady patch under the palms. 00:05:04.177 --> 00:05:07.577 That's a good place to let the babies go to sleep. 00:05:07.584 --> 00:05:10.116 The adults are resting too, but they are just dozing, 00:05:10.116 --> 00:05:12.975 and they are staying a little bit vigilant all the time. 00:05:13.454 --> 00:05:19.148 We make sense of that, because they make sense of the world in similar ways. 00:05:19.148 --> 00:05:21.615 They look relaxed because they are relaxed. 00:05:21.615 --> 00:05:22.857 They've chosen the shade 00:05:22.857 --> 00:05:26.188 for the same reason we would choose the shade. 00:05:27.278 --> 00:05:29.249 These elephants don't look relaxed. 00:05:29.249 --> 00:05:31.541 No one would make that mistake looking at them. 00:05:31.541 --> 00:05:34.746 They seem alarmed. They are alarmed. 00:05:34.746 --> 00:05:36.838 There are dangers. 00:05:36.838 --> 00:05:39.096 There are people who hurt them. 00:05:39.096 --> 00:05:43.164 It turns out that, if you record the conversations of tourists 00:05:43.164 --> 00:05:46.707 and you record the conversations of herders, 00:05:46.707 --> 00:05:48.987 who sometimes hurt elephants, 00:05:48.987 --> 00:05:51.319 and then you play it through a hidden speaker, 00:05:51.319 --> 00:05:53.927 the elephants ignore the tourists, 00:05:53.927 --> 00:05:59.964 but they bunch up and flee in fear from the conversations of herders. 00:05:59.964 --> 00:06:03.750 They put different kinds of humans in different categories. 00:06:03.750 --> 00:06:05.730 They know what's going on. 00:06:05.730 --> 00:06:09.176 They know who their friends are; they know who their enemies are; 00:06:09.176 --> 00:06:11.304 they know who their family members are; 00:06:11.304 --> 00:06:14.774 they have the same imperatives that we have. 00:06:15.374 --> 00:06:19.813 Whether on land or in the sea, it's the same: stay alive, 00:06:19.813 --> 00:06:23.193 keep your babies alive, let life continue. 00:06:23.197 --> 00:06:28.868 We see and understand helping. We see curiosity in the young. 00:06:29.764 --> 00:06:33.183 We see the bonds of family members. 00:06:34.943 --> 00:06:38.563 We recognize affection for what it is. 00:06:41.223 --> 00:06:43.466 Courtship is courtship. 00:06:46.496 --> 00:06:49.638 People sometimes still ask: "But are they conscious?" 00:06:49.638 --> 00:06:53.658 Well, when you get general anesthesia, you become unconscious. 00:06:53.658 --> 00:06:57.176 It means that all of your sensory input is stopped. 00:06:57.176 --> 00:07:00.186 You have no sensation of the world around you. 00:07:00.186 --> 00:07:01.278 That's unconscious. 00:07:01.278 --> 00:07:03.550 When you have sensation of the world around you, 00:07:03.550 --> 00:07:04.658 you are conscious. 00:07:04.658 --> 00:07:07.237 Consciousness is very widespread. 00:07:07.758 --> 00:07:12.127 Some people think that empathy is a very special thing 00:07:12.127 --> 00:07:14.206 that only humans have. 00:07:14.206 --> 00:07:19.159 But empathy is simply the mind's ability to match the mood of your companions. 00:07:19.159 --> 00:07:21.520 It's very useful, and it's very important. 00:07:21.520 --> 00:07:23.647 You have to know what's going on around you, 00:07:23.647 --> 00:07:25.288 what everybody is doing. 00:07:25.288 --> 00:07:29.170 The oldest kind of empathy is called contagious fear. 00:07:29.170 --> 00:07:33.780 If you are with a bunch of companions, and they suddenly all startle and leave, 00:07:33.780 --> 00:07:35.990 it's not very good for you to be staying there, 00:07:35.990 --> 00:07:38.571 saying, "Hey, I wonder why everybody has just left?" 00:07:38.571 --> 00:07:40.151 (Laughter) 00:07:41.201 --> 00:07:44.968 Through evolution, empathy has been embellished as well. 00:07:46.099 --> 00:07:48.630 I think there are sort of three stages of empathy. 00:07:48.630 --> 00:07:52.782 There is feeling with another: I see you happy, it makes me happy; 00:07:52.782 --> 00:07:54.958 I see you sad, it makes me sad. 00:07:54.958 --> 00:07:59.117 Then there is sympathy: I'm sorry your grandmother died. 00:07:59.610 --> 00:08:03.507 I don't feel the same way that you do, but I sympathize. 00:08:03.888 --> 00:08:05.958 And then, there is what I call compassion, 00:08:05.958 --> 00:08:09.438 meaning "acting on your feeling for another." 00:08:11.048 --> 00:08:12.948 [Human Empathy: Far From Perfect] 00:08:12.948 --> 00:08:15.959 Far from being a special thing that only humans have, 00:08:15.959 --> 00:08:18.727 human empathy is far from perfect. 00:08:19.107 --> 00:08:24.244 We round up empathic animals; we kill them, and we eat them. 00:08:24.244 --> 00:08:26.528 And you might say, "Well, that's just predation. 00:08:26.528 --> 00:08:28.212 That is a different species." 00:08:28.212 --> 00:08:30.762 Humans are predators, 00:08:30.762 --> 00:08:35.167 but we're not so great to our own species either a lot of the time. 00:08:35.515 --> 00:08:40.851 I've noticed that people who know only one thing about animal behavior know this word 00:08:40.851 --> 00:08:46.193 and that "you must never project human feelings and emotions on other animals." 00:08:46.193 --> 00:08:47.181 [Anthropomorphism] 00:08:47.181 --> 00:08:51.072 But I'm here to tell you that I think projecting human emotions 00:08:51.072 --> 00:08:53.113 and human thoughts on other animals 00:08:53.113 --> 00:08:57.839 is the best first guess about what they are doing and why. 00:08:57.839 --> 00:09:00.813 After all, it's not terribly scientific 00:09:00.813 --> 00:09:04.013 to say they are hungry, when they are eating, 00:09:04.013 --> 00:09:07.035 and they are tired, when their tongues are hanging out, 00:09:07.035 --> 00:09:10.405 and then, when they are playing and seem joyful, 00:09:10.405 --> 00:09:14.633 say, "We have no way of knowing what's going on in their minds." 00:09:15.035 --> 00:09:16.346 Now, recently, 00:09:16.346 --> 00:09:19.536 I sort of had a conversation with a reporter, and the reporter said, 00:09:19.536 --> 00:09:23.531 "OK, that's kind of convincing, but, really, how do you really know 00:09:23.531 --> 00:09:26.725 that other animals think and feel?" 00:09:26.725 --> 00:09:31.067 And I thought of the hundreds of scientific references that I read 00:09:31.067 --> 00:09:32.731 when I was writing my book. 00:09:32.731 --> 00:09:36.746 But then I realized that the answer was right in the room with me: 00:09:36.746 --> 00:09:40.974 that when my pup comes off the rug and comes over to me, 00:09:40.974 --> 00:09:44.499 rolls over on her back and exposes her belly, 00:09:44.499 --> 00:09:47.972 she's had the thought, "I would like my belly rubbed." 00:09:47.972 --> 00:09:53.255 And she knows that she can come to me, not the sofa, 00:09:53.255 --> 00:09:59.495 that I will understand her request, and that I can get the job done, 00:09:59.495 --> 00:10:03.746 and she anticipates the pleasure of having her belly rubbed. 00:10:03.746 --> 00:10:06.417 She can think, and she can feel. 00:10:06.417 --> 00:10:09.097 And it is not much more complicated than that. 00:10:09.097 --> 00:10:12.523 Usually, when we see animals, we say, "Oh, look! There are elephants," 00:10:12.524 --> 00:10:15.134 or "There are killer whales!" or whatever it is we see. 00:10:15.134 --> 00:10:17.836 But to them, they know exactly who they are. 00:10:17.836 --> 00:10:20.325 This is not just killer whales. 00:10:20.325 --> 00:10:23.195 That one with the tall fin, that male there, 00:10:23.195 --> 00:10:26.205 he is 36-year-old L41. 00:10:26.205 --> 00:10:28.898 Right to his left is his sister. 00:10:28.898 --> 00:10:32.518 She is 42-year-old L44. 00:10:32.518 --> 00:10:37.468 They have been together for decades. They know exactly who they are. 00:10:37.468 --> 00:10:39.579 This is Philo the elephant. 00:10:40.560 --> 00:10:43.328 This is Philo the elephant four days later. 00:10:43.909 --> 00:10:49.047 Humans not only feel grief, humans create grief. 00:10:50.446 --> 00:10:54.696 We want to carve their teeth. Why don't we wait for them to die? 00:10:55.540 --> 00:10:58.394 Elephants used to live from the shores of the Mediterranean 00:10:58.394 --> 00:11:00.668 to the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. 00:11:00.668 --> 00:11:05.079 By 1980 they still had vast strongholds in Central and East Africa. 00:11:05.079 --> 00:11:08.853 Their ranges are being fractured and fragmented. 00:11:08.853 --> 00:11:12.278 This is the geography of a magnificent creature 00:11:12.278 --> 00:11:15.260 that we are driving to extinction. 00:11:16.893 --> 00:11:21.200 We do much better in our own national parks here in the United States. 00:11:21.821 --> 00:11:25.342 We simply killed every single wolf in Yellowstone. 00:11:25.563 --> 00:11:26.988 Then, sixty years later, 00:11:26.988 --> 00:11:30.921 we brought them back because the elk had gotten out of control. 00:11:33.488 --> 00:11:36.130 Many thousands of people spent many million of dollars 00:11:36.130 --> 00:11:39.331 coming to the park to watch the world's most famous wolves. 00:11:39.950 --> 00:11:44.267 These are the alpha trio of a very stable pack. 00:11:44.731 --> 00:11:49.201 That one on the right there is the breeding male. 00:11:49.201 --> 00:11:52.411 The one on the left is his mate. 00:11:52.411 --> 00:11:54.370 The other one is his brother. 00:11:54.370 --> 00:11:57.872 Then, suddenly, wolves came off the Endangered Species Act. 00:11:57.872 --> 00:11:59.927 Congress took wolves off. 00:11:59.927 --> 00:12:02.192 The wolves went to the edge of the park. 00:12:03.052 --> 00:12:04.652 Those two were shot. 00:12:04.652 --> 00:12:11.052 The entire pack, which had been so stable, disintegrated into fighting and division. 00:12:12.722 --> 00:12:15.920 The alpha male of the most famous, most stable pack in Yellowstone 00:12:15.920 --> 00:12:20.121 lost his companions, his hunting territory and his whole family. 00:12:20.121 --> 00:12:22.460 We bring them a lot of harm. 00:12:22.460 --> 00:12:26.543 One of the mysteries is: why don't they harm us very much at all? 00:12:26.543 --> 00:12:30.025 No free-living killer whale has ever hurt a human being. 00:12:30.025 --> 00:12:32.862 This one had just finished eating part of a gray whale 00:12:32.862 --> 00:12:34.514 that he and his family had killed, 00:12:34.514 --> 00:12:37.443 but those people in the boat had absolutely nothing to fear. 00:12:37.443 --> 00:12:42.075 This one had just eaten a seal that weight as much as those people in the boat, 00:12:42.075 --> 00:12:44.624 but they had absolutely nothing to fear. 00:12:45.480 --> 00:12:47.332 They eat seals. 00:12:47.822 --> 00:12:49.972 Why don't they ever eat us? 00:12:50.792 --> 00:12:53.705 How is it we can trust them around our toddlers? 00:12:55.015 --> 00:12:59.714 Why is it that, on more than one occasion, killer whales have returned to researchers 00:12:59.714 --> 00:13:03.893 who got lost in the fog and guided them miles to home? 00:13:06.579 --> 00:13:08.294 In the Bahamas, 00:13:09.044 --> 00:13:11.814 dolphins who were very familiar with Denise Herzing, 00:13:11.814 --> 00:13:14.716 a researcher there, and very interactive with her, 00:13:14.716 --> 00:13:17.009 suddenly got entirely skittish. 00:13:17.009 --> 00:13:18.495 What in the world was going on? 00:13:18.495 --> 00:13:22.515 Suddenly somebody on the boat realized that a person in the boat had died 00:13:22.515 --> 00:13:24.426 during a nap in their bunk. 00:13:24.426 --> 00:13:28.885 How could the dolphins have detected that one of the human hearts had stopped? 00:13:28.885 --> 00:13:31.039 And why would it spook them? 00:13:31.039 --> 00:13:33.916 These are the mysteries of other minds. 00:13:35.488 --> 00:13:38.884 In an aquarium in South Africa, there was a baby bottlenose dolphin. 00:13:38.884 --> 00:13:40.327 Her name was Dolly. 00:13:40.327 --> 00:13:43.496 One of the keepers was on a break having a smoke 00:13:43.496 --> 00:13:46.066 outside the window to the tank. 00:13:46.066 --> 00:13:50.368 Dolly was watching him smoke. She went over to her mother. 00:13:50.368 --> 00:13:53.826 She nursed for a couple of moments, she came back to the window, 00:13:53.826 --> 00:13:56.874 and she released a cloud of milk that enveloped her head 00:13:56.874 --> 00:13:58.842 like a cloud of smoke. 00:13:58.842 --> 00:14:00.387 (Laughter) 00:14:00.726 --> 00:14:06.707 Somehow, she had the idea of using milk to represent smoke. 00:14:06.707 --> 00:14:11.688 And when we use one thing to represent another, we call it art. 00:14:12.638 --> 00:14:14.168 (Laughter) 00:14:14.168 --> 00:14:17.736 The things that make us human are not what we think. 00:14:17.736 --> 00:14:21.938 What makes us human is that we are the most extreme. 00:14:21.938 --> 00:14:25.772 We are the most compassionate; we are the most violent. 00:14:25.772 --> 00:14:30.161 We are the most creative, and we are the most destructive animals 00:14:30.161 --> 00:14:33.248 ever to appear on this planet. 00:14:33.715 --> 00:14:38.228 But we are not the only animals that love one another. 00:14:38.228 --> 00:14:44.351 We are not the only ones who care for our mates or for our children. 00:14:44.351 --> 00:14:48.400 Albatrosses routinely fly six to ten thousand miles 00:14:48.400 --> 00:14:52.244 to bring back one meal for their chick. 00:14:52.244 --> 00:14:54.679 They live on the most remote islands in the world, 00:14:54.679 --> 00:14:58.461 and those islands are covered with plastic trash. 00:14:58.461 --> 00:15:03.466 Into the sacred chain of being that gives life from one generation to the next 00:15:03.466 --> 00:15:05.340 is our garbage. 00:15:05.599 --> 00:15:09.809 Here is an albatross chick, who was about six months old. 00:15:09.809 --> 00:15:12.719 It was about to start flying. It died. 00:15:12.719 --> 00:15:15.969 It was packed with red cigarette lighters. 00:15:15.969 --> 00:15:19.763 This is not the relationship we are supposed to have with the world, 00:15:20.162 --> 00:15:25.722 but we, with our big, celebrated brains, don't use them. 00:15:26.618 --> 00:15:30.263 Yet, when we welcome new life into the world, 00:15:30.673 --> 00:15:33.273 we welcome them with pictures of animals. 00:15:33.273 --> 00:15:37.685 We don't paint cell phones and work cubicles on nursery walls. 00:15:37.685 --> 00:15:39.011 (Laughter) 00:15:39.011 --> 00:15:42.333 We want to say, "Look who is here with us!" 00:15:42.703 --> 00:15:44.811 And yet, every one of those, 00:15:44.811 --> 00:15:49.361 every one deemed worthy of being saved on Noah's Arc, 00:15:49.361 --> 00:15:53.961 is in mortal danger now, and the flood is us. 00:15:56.204 --> 00:16:00.582 We started with a question: "Do they love us?" 00:16:01.675 --> 00:16:05.765 We need to get outside ourselves a little bit and ask: 00:16:06.284 --> 00:16:09.970 "Do we have what it takes 00:16:10.730 --> 00:16:14.615 to simply let life on Earth continue?" 00:16:20.074 --> 00:16:21.212 Thank you. 00:16:21.212 --> 00:16:22.795 (Applause)